Saturday, October 8, 2011

Disma- Towards the Megalith(2011)

Disma- Towards the Megalith

Bubbling up from the depths of a swamp littered with the corpses of the lost and the screams of their damned souls, Disma's Towards the Megalith is thick with suffering and death and almost completely suffocated in a horrifying cloud of distortion and bass. The legendary vocals of Craig Pillard, the man who made the mighty Incantation one of the most beloved Death Metal acts of all time, acts as the demonic and insane Greek Chorus to this blasphemous drama. A veritable super group of Death Metal musicians, which also includes Shawn Eldridge and Daryl Kahn of New Jersey Devils Funebrarum, Disma have summoned one of the most incredibly sludgey and Doom ridden Death Metal albums in years, much to your listening delight.

Musically primitive and simplistic, Towards the Megalith will instantly remind listeners of the early days of Death Metal: one hears elements of Autopsy, Incantation, disEMBOWELMENT and even all female Death/Doom "what-could-have-been" legends Mythic. Incredibly distorted riffs and gut wrenching bass drive each riff, while expert use of creepy melodies and leads give the album an atmosphere of dread and bleakness that few can match. The band almost never head into blast beat territory, and instead seek to smother the listener in their evil as slowly as possible, often to deliciously demented effect. As for the vocals of the masterful Pillard; all one can say is "wow." The man who made guttural growls look almost too easy, Pillard superhuman grunts are as deadly as ever.

It's hard to imagine that this was once the norm for Death Metal in the early 90's, considering the incredibly technical direction the genre started going in for the late 90's and early 00's. If you are looking for a Tech Death hater here, you won't find one in me: I love the inhuman precision of Necrophagist as much as the sloppy and distorted riffs of Disma. But after Tech Death's unfortunate slip into the realm of absurdity over the past few years, Death Metal needs a band like Disma: one that does not merely recycle Old School Death Metal cliches over and over for internet credibility, but one that expertly crafts original works inspired by the rich history of Death Metal so that future generations don't miss out on what makes Death Metal the genre that it is: the fucking blasphemy of it all.

The fucking blasphemy of it all. That is by far the biggest take away from this brilliantly designed piece of Satan worshiping insanity: this is not for the faint of heart. Towards the Megalith is so claustrophobic with the evil stuff it hardly leaves any room to breathe. We would not want it any other way.